Before I could close my eyes, the blade jerked out of its killing arc and followed a harmless trajectory away from me. At the same instant, the dull thrashing of water distantly entered my ears and was joined by a muffled explosion.
A dark rain spattered the surface of the water above my face and mixed lazily into milky spirals-cloudy helixes of vermilion in the dim moonlight. A second blunted thump sounded, followed quickly by a third, then a fourth. Three more showers of the thick crimson rain sprinkled wildly across the water’s surface. The hand around my throat spasmed twice then fell limp. The weight pressing down on my chest shifted heavily and slid sideways.
Cool air rushed forcefully into my lungs, flowing down my throat in a thick gulp as I suddenly broke the surface. I gasped gratefully, sputtering and choking on the lake water I had sucked in, and blinked rapidly to clear the debris from my eyes. I began flailing angrily as I felt a large meaty hand entwine itself with the front of my shirt in a viselike grip then relaxed when I realized I was being pulled out instead of being pushed back in.
Felicity, Deckert, Mandalay, and two of the officers gathered in a loose semicircle around me as I laid gasping on the bank. Ben’s large hand was still tightly gripping my waterlogged shirt, shaking me.
“Rowan?! Rowan?! Are you all right?” his concern-laden voice urgently met my ears.
I looked around the worried faces of the group then back to his. “Little girl?” I croaked.
“She’s fine. The other coppers are with her,” he smiled down at me. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
Telltale distant warbling was growing louder as emergency vehicles raced to converge on us. I struggled to sit up, only to find they weren’t going to allow it. Ben and Felicity both pressed me back down gently.
“Stay put,” my wife ordered softly. “They’re coming for you too.”
I didn’t protest, I just continued biting off large chunks of the night air and swallowing them hungrily. Again, I focused on Ben’s face.
“Hey, Tonto,” I choked out between breaths, “you shoot the bad guy?”
“Yeah, Kemosabe,” he grinned. “Yeah, I shot the bastard.”
“Next time,” I wheezed, “don’t take so damn long.”
CHAPTER 28
“Ben was telling me you got a call from that muckity-muck up in Seattle,” Deckert posed and then took a hearty sip of beer. “What’d he have to say?”
He, Ben, and I were seated around the patio table on the back deck of my house. A little more than a week had passed since that night at Wild Woods Park, and I had coaxed them over for a day of barbecue and relaxation. We all desperately needed the chance to decompress from the pressure of the maniacally whirlwind investigation, as well as the intensity of its abrupt ending.
“He wanted to give me the reward he’d been offering,” I answered, carefully trimming the end from a Cruz Real #19. “Everyone’s firmly convinced that Roger was responsible for his daughter’s murder, so he wanted to pay up. How he got my name, he wouldn’t say.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I gave him a list of charities. Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund and the like.” I set a wooden match alight and touched the fire to the end of my cigar. “I told him if he really wanted to do something for me, that he should split the reward between them in the names of his daughter and the other victims.”
“In other words,” Ben interjected, waving his own cigar in my direction, “ya’ turned it down.”
“I like to think of it as redirected,” I expressed.
Allison, Felicity, and Mona, Detective Deckert’s wife, were leisurely roaming the perimeter of our large backyard. Every now and then they would pause to admire the last fitful colors of summer that still bloomed in our various wildflower gardens.
Benjamin Storm Junior was giggling with the unencumbered innocence of youth as he tumbled and rolled in the center of the yard. Our dogs let out excited, puppyish yelps, tails wagging and ears perked, as he chased them about in a wild game of tag.
The domestic Saturday afternoon scene was kind and familiar. I longed to lose myself to the relaxed feeling of security but knew deep down that it was a place I could only visit. I would never again be allowed to live there.
Ariel Tanner’s death had forced me to deal with a question I had denied without even knowing it. The question of what my purpose within this lifetime was to be. The answer was one that I had only now begun to come to terms with.
It was only a matter of time before something evil would knock upon my door again, and I knew it. I hoped I would be prepared to face whatever it turned out to be.
“I still can’t get over that glamour thing.” Carl leaned back in his chair, cradling his beer bottle. “I mean I was lost! I couldn’t find anybody, and the woods just kept getting darker and thicker no matter which direction I went. Seemed like it went on forever. Next thing I know, everything clears up, and I’m on the other side of the freakin’ park hearin’ all this screamin’. It was weird. Just plain weird.”
From the descriptions provided by Ben, Carl, Agent Mandalay, and the other officers, I had come to the conclusion that they were all most likely affected by a Spell of Misdirection — a glamour of sorts. The closer they had come to the small clearing, the more disoriented and confused they became. The illusion of the thickening woods obscured the clearing and led them farther away with each step. Agent Mandalay had simply stumbled into the ritual circle entirely by accident. The amount of energy and concentration Roger Henderson had to have expended in order to affect and maintain such a massive phantasm was almost certainly the reason he had not detected my presence in the park until it was too late.
“Mandalay is the one who caught the worst of it,” I volunteered. “Whatever she was seeing, it definitely wasn’t pretty.”
“That reminds me,” Ben spoke up. “I meant ta’ ask you… If he could do all that shit, then why was he botherin’ ta’ drug his victims? Why didn’t he just eenee meenee hocus pocus ‘em?”
“It’s just a guess, but there are a couple of reasons I can think of off-hand.” I drained the last of my own beer before outlining the ideas. “One would be the unpredictability. An aware mind isn’t fooled by illusions and wouldn’t fall into a trance. Another would be that even if he were able to hypnotize his victims, so to speak, the sharp physical pain of the flaying would have snapped them out of it. Drugging them was his safest bet to keep them quiet and immobile.”
They both thoughtfully nodded acceptance of my explanation. Moving my chair back, I stood and checked the burning coals in the fire pit. A fine coating of whitish-grey ash had formed across half the surfaces of the briquettes. Randomly, the ash had fallen away to reveal a fiery red-orange glow. A small tremor ran the length of my spine as my mind fleetingly focused on the memory of the cancerous grey-red combination of Roger Henderson’s violent eyes. I must have stood staring into the pit a moment too long as I was snapped back to reality by the sound of my friend’s voice.
“Hey, white man. You okay?”
“Huh?”
“You’re kinda starin’ off into space, guy,” Deckert intoned. “Something bothering you?”
“No. No, just daydreaming.” I shrugged off their mildly concerned queries and then changed the subject. “The fire needs a few more minutes. I’m dry, anyone else need a beer?”
“Yeah,” Ben answered, then drained the last remnants from his bottle.
“Count me in,” Deckert added.
I gathered the empty bottles and disposed of them in the recycle bin before opening the door of the plant-filled atrium and proceeding into the kitchen. Allison, Felicity, and Mona had chased me out of this area earlier and between the three of them, had quickly prepared the food that was to be grilled. Fresh herb scents filled the kitchen and helped me to ease back into the pleasant reality at hand.